Hours after they burst into the chamber, the attackers remained in control of the building and were holding dozens of hostages, police said. Hundreds of police and army soldiers ringed the parliament building in central Yerevan as officials negotiated with the unidentified gunmen.

At least six other lawmakers were wounded in the attack, said Health Minister Ike Nikogosian.

Armenia, which became an independent republic following the Soviet collapse in 1991, has endured years of political and economic turmoil. Sarkisian was No. 2 in the government, behind President Robert Kocharian.

Kocharian was personally directing the security forces around the building.

The full cabinet was attending a question-and-answer session in the parliament chamber at the time of the shooting. Frightened lawmakers ran from the building, which is located in the center of Yerevan.

Armenian television, broadcasting footage of the attack, showed at least two men in long coats firing automatic weapons in the chamber. Some lawmakers dove under their desks.

"They said it was a coup and called on the journalists to inform people about it. They said they were going to punish the authorities for what they did to the nation," said one reporter who was in the chamber.

The gunmen demanded to speak on national television.

Sarkisian, a 40-year-old former athletic instructor and Soviet propaganda official, was appointed premier by Kocharian last June.

Sarkisian was an ally of Demirchian, who was Armenia's Soviet-era leader. The two headed the hard-line Unity party.

Sarkisian's political movement forced the resignation of President Levon Ter-Petrosian in February 1998. It accused him of pursuing defeatist policies on the issue of independence for the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh by agreeing to discuss returning territory to Azerbaijan.

Sarkisian previously headed a nationalist group representing war veterans who fought in Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a major war over the enclave.

The premier's party was closely tied to a militia group known as the Yerkrapah Battalion, which Western human rights groups have accused of harassing religious organizations, especially those that discourage military service.

Azeri officials said Wednesday they could not rule out the possibility that the attack was linked to talks to resolve the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.

"I can't exclude that this was initiated by outside forces that want to destabilize the country during the Nagorno-Karabakh talks," said First Deputy Foreign Minister Khalaf Khalafov.

The presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan are believed to be close to an agreement on the disputed region, where war broke out in 1988 over attempts by the area's ethnic Armenian majority to shake off Azeri rule.

Some 35,000 people died in fighting that continued until a 1994 cease-fire.

Vafa Guluzade, former senior foreign policy advisor to President Haydar Aliyev, and one of the negotiators in recent talks, said some forces were working against peace in the region.

"It would be difficult for Armenia to conclude a peace deal with Azerbaijan because there are forces that don't want this," he said.

Guluzade offered no further explanation, but the term

"external" is usually used in the Caucasus to allude to Russia, accused of trying to destabilize the region in the past. Both Azerbaijan and Armenia are former Soviet republics.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, who had been in Yerevan for talks on Nagorno-Karabakh, traveled late Wednesday afternoon to Ankara, Turkey. He was not in Yerevan at the time of the shooting.